Philanthropy Magazine Archives
Back Issues
Gifts of Health
For generations, deadly epidemics were a regular occurrence in America. The disease feared perhaps more than any other was yellow fever. Every few years, outbreaks would explode across seaboard regions, killing…
President’s Note: What Lies Ahead
For the last three decades, The Philanthropy Roundtable has provided thought-provoking content through our quarterly magazine, Philanthropy. Like you, I read the pages with great interest, and the stories inspired my…
President’s Note: Hope Through Philanthropy
It’s a true honor to join The Philanthropy Roundtable as president. This year has been a challenging and deeply painful one for our country and our world. In the midst of a…
Outsmarting Albert Barnes
Editor’s Note: In December 2022, Philanthropy Roundtable released a short film, “Donor Intent Gone Wrong: The Battle for Control of the Barnes Art Collection,” that explores Albert Barnes’s story and…
Universities and Identity Politics
Are college campuses training young Americans in balkanization and grievance politics—and thus functioning as the fountainheads of national division? Philanthropy asked experts and donors. Here’s what they said. Peter Wood President, National Association…
Art Becomes Orthodox
Last fall a colleague came into my office with a story. She had spoken with the artistic director of an American symphony known for its interest in forgotten works and…
Saving Free Speech
This summer—just as saying something controversial (or not saying something mandatory) got numerous charitable leaders excoriated, several academic leaders dumped, a host of editors and writers ousted, and articles and…
Addressing Health-Care Worker Burnout
Forty-four percent of the U.S. working population of doctors were experiencing burnout in 2017, according to the latest numbers from a national, longitudinal, triennial study. The consequences of this are…
The Great Distance-Learning Experiment
With almost no warning this spring, America’s schools closed, and more than 56 million children became part of a giant remote-learning trial. In-person instruction, over-the-shoulder help, team projects, guided lessons…
The Long and the Short of Emergency Cash Grants
The soothsayer warned us: Beware the Ides of March. As February reached its end, U.S. unemployment sat at 3.5 percent—you’d have to go back to 1953 to find a lower rate—and…
Two Titans, Two Temples
No city on earth is more richly supplied with museums, libraries, concert halls, and other cultural amenities than New York. And unlike other global cities, most of New York’s treasures come…
Interview with Maajid Nawaz
Maajid Nawaz is an advocate for democracy and justice, especially in Muslim communities in the West. A former Islamist who spent years in prison, he now speaks and writes in…
Interview with Nadine Strossen
Nadine Strossen is no stranger to controversy. For 18 years she served as president of the American Civil Liberties Union, and now lectures at law schools on the Constitution and…
Interview: Putting a Panic Into Perspective
To make sense of our unprecedented situation, Philanthropy interviewed a range of experts—doctors, governors, economists, funders, entrepreneurs—to get their perspectives on the covid-19 panic. What follows is a sampling of edited…
Enemies of Innovation
The acclaimed economist and public intellectual Thomas Sowell has penned a short but forceful defense of charter schooling. The first two chapters (and 60 pages of data in the appendix!) make…
Books: Curing Decadence
As a professional opinion slinger, Ross Douthat is an ambidextrous wonder. He can take an “idealet”—a word coined by master newspaper columnist Charles Krauthammer—and deftly spin it into a weekly squib of…
Books: Givers Can Do Better
At a conference last fall I had a leisurely conversation with Kris Putnam-Walkerly about her upcoming book, Delusional Altruism—an exchange that resulted in her quoting me on the importance of shared values…
Smashing Culture
In addition to destroying images of dead Confederates, protestors this summer toppled a bust of George Washington in D.C., tore down sculptures of Washington and Thomas Jefferson in Portland, and tried…
The Exchange
MicroschoolingDonor leadership on covid-19Ideas on race, policing, crimeBlack female millionaire donorHeterodoxy growsRBG and donor intentSmashing culture AS A NEW SCHOOL YEAR opened with pandemic still in the air, families across the…
The Exchange
Philanthropy freedom fighterThe Nation and Bill GatesDonor privacy winsBe little and freeCommunity college golden hourHomeschooling, payout rates, and suffrageClosing Catholic schoolsAnd silver linings Please join us in offering a hearty welcome…
A Golden Hour for Community Colleges
The vast majority of media coverage of higher ed focuses on four-year, residential colleges. As the re-opening debate unfolds this summer and fall, you’ll hear lots of chatter about the fancy-pants…
Charity as a Good Virus
It was when I received an e-mail from the little Bavarian village of Oberammergau that I knew the Wuhan coronavirus had stirred up a hurricane. In 1632, the bubonic plague descended…
Philanthropists Against Social Distancing
Like other seaport cities in the early decades of American independence, Philadelphia was hit during many summers with waves of yellow fever. In those days no one had any idea…
Road Trip
America’s #1 Research Hospital Massachusetts General • Boston, Massachusetts The charitable hospital is one of the great achievements of American philanthropy. Traditionally, people who had money were treated at home for all…
Steering Through a Storm
Well before Hurricane Harvey reached Houston in August 2017, it hurtled through Aransas County, Texas. The small coastal region endured 130-mile-per-hour winds, the strongest hurricane landfall winds to hit the…
Who Left the Dogs Out?
When Leona Helmsley died, it wasn’t exactly a national day of mourning. The billionaire real estate mogul was known as the “Queen of Mean,” and was often depicted as a…
Bringing Civic Education Back to Campus
During his lifetime, George Washington was, among other things, the nation’s single largest benefactor of higher education. Three years before he died, Washington made a major contribution to the Augusta…
Toward a Philosophy of Philanthropy
Frank Hanna believes that “unexamined wealth is not worth having.” It’s a radical proposal, in every sense of the word. What Your Money Means (And How To Use It Well)by…
A Note from Philanthropy Magazine’s First Editor
The Philanthropy Roundtable’s origin goes back to the late 1980s, when a group of liberty-minded foundations split off from the Council on Foundations rather than sign on to a statement…
As We Say Goodbye to Print, We Look Forward to Philanthropy’s Digital Future
For three decades, Philanthropy magazine has played a critical role in the philanthropic sector. It has offered a unique perspective, highlighted important information and shared fascinating stories about donors and…
The Evaluation Wars
Am I doing good by giving this money away?” is a question everyone in philanthropy should ask regularly. It is hard for funders to do good; it is all too…
A Federalist Solution
Three years ago, a group of center-right academics and policy leaders gathered at Princeton University to discuss defense policy and foreign affairs. One presidential administration was coming to an end,…
Fixing Child Protection
IN THE PAST 30 YEARS, MAJOR PROGRESS HAS been made in combating child abuse. In 1963, only about 150,000 children were reported to the authorities because of suspected abuse or…
Face of Charity
SINCE THE TRAGIC DEATH LAST AUGUST OF Diana, Princess of Wales, charities around the world have been appealing to the public in her name. The official Memorial Fund — established…
The Insider’s Guide to Spend Down
Someone once jokingly referred to foundations as a pile of money surrounded by people seeking to spend it. There is a grain of truth in this comment, but philanthropists and…
Howard Fuller Has Hope for the Next Generation of Education Reformers
An early and vocal charter school advocate, Howard Fuller served as the superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools from 1991-1995. Most recently, he was a professor of education at Marquette University, a position from…
How a New Fund Helps Parents Teach Their Children
When LaTasha Adams brought her toddler to the playground one day, the two of them began chatting in full sentences. Another parent was shocked—wasn’t her daughter just a couple of…
Good News for Religious Giving
Most donors say the pandemic won’t stop them from giving to religious causes, and some of them will even step up their giving. According to a survey of donors by…
The Ones Who Know How To Save
As a child, Oseola McCarty would come home from elementary school and iron clothes, stashing the money she earned in her doll buggy. McCarty was raised in Hattiesburg by her grandmother and…
Replacing Violence with Community
Thirty years ago, when Father Greg Boyle was a pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights, he became troubled by the prevalence of gang violence in his Los Angeles…
The Carnegie Corporation Turns 100
A century has passed since Carnegie founded the Carnegie Corporation of New York. What would its founder think of it today? In 1889, in the first of two essays that…
Battling Poverty With Family Support and Economic Incentives
Mauricio Miller’s bio states that more than two decades of working in social services left him “disenchanted with the social sector’s approach to fighting poverty” and wanting to try something…
Philanthropists Helping America Restart
While many donors have turned toward humanitarian efforts to ease the impact of the coronavirus pandemic—think donations to food banks and hospitals—some are looking at a different sort of humanitarian…
A Record for Catholic-school Scholarships
In September 2015, the Inner-city Scholarship Fund run by the Archdiocese of New York announced the largest-ever U.S. gift to Catholic schooling. Christine and Stephen Schwarzman gave a record $40 million…
Laying the Intellectual Foundation for Racial Equality
In 1935, the board of the Carnegie Corporation expressed interest in “Negro problems” in the United States, and the extent to which they could be reduced through education. This led to…
Private Donations and National Defense
One of the last places you might expect to see American philanthropy in action is in supporting U.S. service members as they do their jobs overseas. An unusual and highly effective charity…
Ignorance, Anarchy, Even Dissolution
Philanthropy recently spoke with Jonathan Greenberg of the Jack Miller Family Foundation about mobs tearing down statues, how donors can fund civics education, and the importance of teaching history to…
A Victory for School Choice
The Supreme Court just delivered a victory for school choice, but only time will tell how much it will affect students across the U.S. At the end of June, the high court ruled…
Guides to Schooling Options for Fall 2020
During this period of COVID-19 disruption, many families are determining the best school option for their children this fall. To help families navigate their options, National School Choice Week published these comprehensive…
Teaching America’s Founding Principles
The Jack Miller Center for Teaching America’s Founding Principles and History was a response to the low level of civics knowledge among American undergraduates. Created in 2007, the center identifies academics…
J. P. Morgan: A Patron of the Arts
John Pierpont Morgan is remembered as a beefy, red-faced bully, fierce and lonely, possessed of small ideas and consumed by enormous greed. All of this is deeply unfair to Morgan.…
Americans Extraordinary Response in Time of Crisis: Giving
As our economy and social life shut down this spring, there was one part of American society that kicked into a higher rather than lower gear—philanthropy. Despite lockdowns, layoffs, stock-market collapses,…
Inventing Online Learning
So-called “distance learning” has been available to disciplined students for generations, with instruction and degrees available by mail, television, even radio. The Internet, though, opened yawning opportunities for new forms of…
Strengthening Catholic Schools
While more than 50 Catholic schools have been forced to close their doors in the last few months, in part because of the coronavirus, two in Cleveland are poised to…
Benjamin Rush: An Early American Medical Marvel
The most prominent defender of the public during America’s first viral panic—the 1793 yellow fever outbreak—was a physician and philanthropist named Benjamin Rush. Rush completed his medical training in Europe…
Great Gifts of Health From U.S. Donors
For generations, deadly epidemics were a regular occurrence in America. The disease feared perhaps more than any other was yellow fever. Every few years, outbreaks would explode across seaboard regions, killing…
Boosts for Small Business
Last month, Philanthropy Roundtable director of economic opportunity Tony Mayer hosted a webinar reviewing local philanthropic measures to help small businesses stay afloat during the economic distress associated with covid-19. He…
The State of Charitable Giving
Philanthropic giving in the U.S. shot upward last year. In fact, it rose to its second highest level ever recorded, with donations from individuals, bequests, foundations, and corporations reaching $449.6…